A lot of people will tell you that republicans will abandon any of their moral principles for even the *chance* at just a little more power. This is simply not true. Take, for an example, the recent separation of republicans from Breitbart editor and professional Twitter Troll, Milo Yiannopoulos. Here is a person who has made a name for himself by leading targeted harassment campaigns. He was one of the key figures in “Gamergate,” where an “Alt-Right” coalition of racists and misogynists (who consider him a champion of sorts) rallied behind him to harass, intimidate, and threaten women and minorities in the video game industry. Along with women and minorities, Milo targets Muslims, foreign students, and people who are transgender–A group that is already nearly TEN TIMES more likely to attempt suicide–all while hiding behind the concept of “free speech.” He helped spearhead the racist campaign of hatred and harassment against Leslie Jones after she dared to take part in an all-female remake of Ghostbusters (which I wrote about HERE), and as a result of that (and other things), Twitter closed down his account. Think about that for a minute… TWITTER! Do you have any idea how many awful examples of humanity are posting things on Twitter? Imagine what kind of a special ass hole you have to be to get banned by Twitter. He is a genuinely despicable, objectively terrible human being who gets some sort of demented gratification out of attacking groups of people who are already at risk… And none of those things were enough to discourage the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) from inviting him to be a speaker for this year’s conference.

A celebration of depravity and cruelty… A republican hero.

These facts might lead you to suspect that the republican party has no moral compass whatsoever… That they have no sense of common decency or concept of right and wrong. Well, I’ve got some good news for you! They WILL separate themselves and disavow some people, even if that separation might alienate some of that person’s adoring fans. There IS a line they won’t cross. Here’s all it took: It took him condoning PEDOPHILIA. It took an actual video of him defending grown men having sex with 13 year old boys.

That’s it. That’s the line. That’s what it takes for you to be “too awful” to be embraced by today’s republican party–DEFENDING SEXUAL ABUSE AGAINST 13 YEAR OLD BOYS.

Appearing at a college and targeting a transgender student BY NAME? No big deal. Verbally attacking rape survivors? Meh. Claiming all those “rape stories” from college campuses that involve sex are “all frauds and hoaxes?” We’ve got bigger fish to fry, people. And (as you can see in the video below) it seems that a person stating he believes that grabbing a woman’s breasts is NOT sexual assault, and that men groping women is “not that big a deal” is ALSO not particularly disqualifying…

I mean, I GET why some people night be tempted to think that republicans have no moral line they will not cross… That kind of thing is going to happen when CPAC has ALSO asked someone to speak who was caught on tape bragging about how being famous allows him to do whatever he wants to women… Including “grabbing them by the pussy.”

This might seem like a disaster to some–Especially for the party which so many Christians feel compelled to vote for–but I think it’s a good thing… You know? At least we have a line now. At least we know what is officially “out of bounds” for the party of “conservative values,” the “moral majority,” and evangelical voters: It’s defending and condoning the rape of middle schoolers.

Would this proposal include a certain orange narcissist?

As republican leadership has taken this brave stand against condoning pedophilia, we are already seeing other republicans start to distance themselves a bit from the former golden boy, Yiannopoulos. In Tennessee (where I live) a representative named Martin Daniel (click on his name for his contact information, if you happen to feel like calling him and letting him know what you think of him) was trying to pass “The Milo Bill” (created after protests kept Milo from speaking at Berkley) that supposedly “protects free speech” on college campuses. But now (after finding out Milo is a defender of pederasty), he has decided to add a few more names to the bill…

We're adding names to HB739. It will also be known as the Thomas Jefferson, Patrick Henry, Thomas Paine, & the MLK JR. bill. #1A#FreeSpeech

Yes, you read that right… He’s taking down the “Milo,” and adding the names of Thomas Jefferson, Patrick Henry, Thomas Paine, and Martin Luther King, Jr. to the bill. I will now pause to give you time to deal with the vomit that is almost surely in your mouth…

But make no mistake: These people are are not interested in protecting ALL speech… They are interested in protecting speech that they agree with. If a Muslim with anti-American leanings wanted to speak at the University of Tennessee, and student protests made it clear that his voice was not welcome on campus, it would be a clear case of “The people have spoken.” But when a mouthpiece for Alt-Right hatred gets shouted down, all of a sudden it’s a “violation of that person’s right to free speech.” But listen–Just because you have the right to say something doesn’t mean that I have to lend you my megaphone. And Milo’s right to spout his hateful lies does not include the right to use any platform he desires.

For years, Steve Bannon’s “Breitbart” was celebrated as the number one platform for the Alt-Right. And–until this recent controversy forced him to resign and cost him a $250,000 book deal–Milo Yiannopoulos was a Breitbart Senior Editor and a pet project of Steve Bannon… A man who now sits as this current president’s Chief Strategist, as well as holding a seat on the National Security Council. Bannon’s white nationalist platform now has a front row seat at White House Press Conferences… A LITERAL front row seat, since Trump’s team only reserved one seat for a member of the press: Breitbart.

There is no question of “Is this the right thing to do?” The morality of an issue is not a concern… Only the questions of “Will this bring us more power than we currently have?” and “Can we get away with it?”The GOP will GLADLY embrace white nationalists and avowed racists if it will give them more power. They are not bothered by Trump’s continued lies, they are not bothered by his philandering or his three marriages, they are not bothered by his wife’s nude photos (neither am I, but these same people seemed very disturbed by Michelle Obama showing her shoulders in a photograph), they are not bothered by his inflammatory hatred against Muslims, Mexicans, immigrants, and refugees, they are not bothered by his continued bullying, they are not bothered by his continued attacks on the American democratic process and the freedom of the press, and they are not bothered by his continued hypocrisy (as he attacked president Obama for playing too much golf, while going golfing SIX TIMES in his first month in office).

The closest thing today’s republican party has to a moral question is this: “How much will it cost?” The only criticism that seems to have any staying power with republicans right now is the criticism of how much all of his and his family’s travels are costing. In eight years, President Obama’s travel cost totaled $97 million… In one month, Donalds’s travel costs have already topped $10 million. In one month, Donald Trump has spent one tenth the cost of President Obama’s TOTAL travel costs for 96 months. At this rate, if Trump were in office for eight years (God forbid), the American people will have spent $960 MILLION on the Trump family’s excursions to Mar-a-Lago and his wife’s decision to stay in her gilded New York Tower. That’s over SIX TIMES the amount of the annual budget for the National Endowment for the Arts that republicans want to get rid of… But even now, it is grossing me out that I feel like this is the only criticism with any teeth. THERE IS MORE TO RIGHT AND WRONG THAN HOW MUCH THINGS COST!

So it turns out the republican party is NOT completely morally bankrupt. It might seem like none of their concern is with any issues of “right” or “wrong.” It might appear that they are concerned with one thing: More power. You might think they will abandon any moral compass they may have had for a chance at more power. I mean, sure… They don’t care about a lot: They don’t care about hypocrisy. They don’t care about attacking the character of rape survivors, or acting like all accusers of sexual assault are making it up. Here are just a few of Milo’s headlines from Brietbart:

“Leaving it up to the states” to decide whether or not to protect trans kids is going to put lives in danger. It’s disgusting and shameful.

And as of yesterday, they don’t care about protecting the safety of transgender kids just trying to use the bathroom at school without getting harassed. They act like they care a *liiiiitle* bit about wasting money… Though they’ll waste ALL THE MONEY if it will keep them in power. But there’s one thing they WON’T stand for… There is a line they won’t cross… There is a character flaw in their leadership they won’t overlook… There is one thing that they will not sell out for… There is one value for which they will not abandon their moral center…. HERE IT IS: They won’t put up with people defending and condoning the rape of children.At least not on video. And at least not if people hear about it because that video gets shared a lot. Or unless that person says they are sorry for saying what they said… We’ll wait and see. AT LEAST THERE IS A LINE!

15 Responses to The Republican Party Is NOT Morally Bankrupt

What happened, I think, was that Milo finally made himself into such a pariah that he was no longer useful to the Ones Who Crave Power. So they cut him loose. I’m praying that soon the same thing will happen with Donald Trump.

I agree that Milo is a stench on our national conversation. I also wouldn’t stop him from speaking at any public university. Nor would I invite him to a private function like CPAC.

“If a Muslim with anti-American leanings wanted to speak at the University of Tennessee, and student protests made it clear that his voice was not welcome on campus, it would be a clear case of ‘The people have spoken.'”

For some on the right, this is true, but that’s not a conservative position.

But I have a question… Regardless of how disgusting Republican beliefs are, do you want an honest conversation? Or are you content in your echo chamber? In this post, you put all your effort into validating the beliefs of people who agree with you, reinforcing that echo chamber. And I was hoping from the title and opening that you were extending an olive branch, which made your point all the more partisan.

To answer your question, I honestly believe that Republican elected officials right now are either morally bankrupt, or too filled with cowardice to speak up for what is right. They are focused on two things: reelection and gaining more power.

Republican leadership has found a strategy that works. They are focused on motivating people through fear and through deception. And somehow, they still manage to act like they are the “moral” of the two parties… because of abortion. But even their abortion stance is so gross because they are only using it as a means to accumulate more power and take rights away from people who are not straight white Christian men. It is despicable and depraved. Republicans all over the country fall into one of three categories: 1) people who know that the party and platform are morally bankrupt and don’t care, 2) people who I know that the party is morally bankrupt and are too cowardly to do anything about it, and 3) people who are too stupid to understand that the party is morally bankrupt.

This is not to say that the Democratic Party is without fault or some sort of savior for our country… It’s just to say that Republicans have completely jumped the shark. And they have taken evangelicals with them. Richard Spencer–an avowed white nationalist and neo Nazi–was invited to speak at CPAC. It took some people throwing a fit about giving a literal white supremacist nazi a platform to get the leadership to rescind their invitation. They are embracing steps towards fascism, they are anti-American, and they are wholly anti-Jesus. Awful awful awful. Shameful shameful shameful. There is no olive branch. They are depraved.

I have been having this rant in my head. Oh, so you DO have a single moral?! A single family-ish value-ish: teenaged boys shouldn’t be statutorily raped. I mean, grown women are open season! Teenagers in beauty pageant dressing rooms too! But NOT, definitely not, teenaged boys. Ugh.

My entire astonishment isn’t so much that at last there is a line in the sand, but that my fellow co-religionists have abandoned all their other lines.

A candidate who mocks the disabled.

A candidate who boasts of sexually assaulting women.

A candidate who cannot name one thing about the scriptures or the Christian faith.

A candidate who thinks the communion plate is for the offering.

A candidate who says he does not need to repent because he’s not done anything wrong.

This candidate is embraced by my Christian co-religionists.

I just cannot understand it in any way that makes sense if I think Christian theology is true and the work of Christ in his body of believers is true.

This is not of Christ, what is happening in the American Evangelical white church.

What IS happening is something else entirely, and it lays bear, in my opinion, what the true values are of the Evangelical white church.

It makes me think that all the decades of “bible teaching” on Sunday mornings and the radio shows and the TV shows and the crusades and the missions and the outreaches have not actually created that many followers of Christ who obey his words and are his disciples.

American pastors of white churches should admit they’ve done an abysmal job of inculcating the faith. Whatever it is they were doing, it wasn’t forming Christ in these people.

“American pastors of white churches should admit they’ve done an abysmal job of inculcating the faith. Whatever it is they were doing, it wasn’t forming Christ in these people.”

Which is consequence of the unavoidable ambiguity of “what does it mean to ‘follow Christ’?” Since “Christian truth” is ultimately a matter of interpretation, whether individual or collective; and since the alleged sources — “the Old Testament Scriptures”, “the New Testament Scriptures”, and, depending upon the individual and/or collective, possibly “Oral Tradition”, other texts (e.g. the Book of Mormon), and even direct divine revelation — are not only liable to varied interpretation but meaningless without interpretation; then, what defines “followers of Christ who obey his words and are his disciples” is ultimately a matter of “in the eyes of the beholder”.

“I just cannot understand it in any way that makes sense if I think Christian theology is true and the work of Christ in his body of believers is true.” Even your own dismay is a consequence of your interpretation of “Christian truth” disagreeing with others’ interpretations of “Christian truth”. Just as you are sincere in your interpretation, may of those holding interpretations different and even conflicting with yours are likewise sincere.

Which, is all further evidence of the damage precipitated when ethics and morals are based in any way upon superstitions such as “Christ”. A person who develops ethics from a rationalist basis is, as humans are bio-wired to do, probably going to stubbornly defend an erroneous conclusion, but finally admits her/his ethics originate in human reasoning……However anyone who holds morals and ethics which are believed to be of divine origin is not only going to resort to natural human stubbornness but, worse, to an absolutist “god-said-this-so-no-matter-what,-it-is-correct ! ” that ultimately resists even facts.

You want hope for change? Then, first, dismiss all your supernatural bases for your ethics and morals. Your belief in a version of deity which is vastly different than the version believed by those pastors and republicans unwittingly supports them in their belief of their different version — because, by believing in any god at all, you encourage them in the belief that some god exists from whom ethics and morals are revealed and given to humankind.

I appreciate the time you took to read through my post and to respond to the individual parts.

We would have to go back to first principles, I think, to understand where we both stand with regards to Reason and Nature and Faith.

I’m firmly in the supernaturalist camp wherein an eternal God wills into existence the physical world, a world which exemplifies many things characteristic of the nature of God: creativity, power, life, beauty, as well as aspects such as justice and truth and good which are not so much willed into existence but made manifest in the physical world which has no means to measure them.

Because I’m a supernaturalist vis-à-vis God, I’m going to start from that point, that the God of Heaven supernaturally intends the nature and work of humanity. And that humans, male and female and anything in between or around, have the option to join in that work willingly or to oppose it willingly, that what matters is human reason and choice superintended by God’s oversight and actions.

I am complaining here about my co-religionists and their behavior with respect to what they say they believe. I do not think it useful to say “you should abandon your beliefs” when what I am instead saying is “you should demonstrate your beliefs.”

“I do not think it useful to say ‘you should abandon your beliefs’ when what I am instead saying is ‘you should demonstrate your beliefs.’ ”

However, what that demonstration should look like to you is, again, based on your interpretation of “what it means to follow Christ.” What the practical outworkings of that interpretation “ought to be”, same as the interpretation, are subjective.

Your co-religionists are, by-and-large, not any less sincere nor devoted to “following christ” than you are. They simply disagree with you on how “following Christ” works in daily practice.

Which, returns me to my advice to you: ethics/morals of “divine origin”
inevitably subordinate reason and rationalism to that divine origin of them. Such subordination merely supports absolutism, ‘cuz, after all, “who can argue with god about what’s right or wrong?” Further, the unavoidable ambiguities in sources engender varied if not literally conflicting absolutist interpretations of “right and wrong”. And, even rival religionists inadvertently support each other — those pastors and Repubs may disagree with your interpretations and subsequent applications, but they will eagerly include your theism when they brandish, “Who doesn’t believe that ethics and morals originate with God!”

There’s another factor to Milo’s fall from grace. It’s worth specifying that he was condoning same-sex pedophilic relationships. I don’t know specifically of any well-regarded republicans who have expressed explicit support for relationships between men and girls and/or women and boys (though given how often people seem to think that male students raped by female teachers should be congratulated rather than protected I would not be surpised) but prominent republican Donald Trump has openly expressed incestuous sexual desire for his daughter from a young age. The jury is still out on whether pedophilia is where the line is, or just the gay kind